Iceland's Southern Coast (Part 2)

Hello! Happy Independence Day! Just a few more Iceland posts left before we move on to the UK! Our day started out with a few images from the organic farm we were staying at! There are more sheep/rams than people in Iceland, and the farm had quite a few. I just think they are adorable, so Jake was very patient while I took a few pictures of them before we started our daily adventures!

This cat looks pretty, just not very friendly. Oh well!

This is the view from the guesthouse where we stayed!

Our day started with a journey to the national park of Fjadrargljufur, which Jake and I had never heard of prior to visiting. The drive was mildly treacherous, as most of the 2 kilometer journey was unpaved. However, it was definitely worth it as we discovered a gorgeous canyon!

 Jake chose to re-enact a scene from the Lion King with our water bottle.

 Such lovely views!

One of the coolest (literally) places from our travels in Iceland was the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon. This lagoon is full of beautiful blue and clear glaciers that have broken off from an immense glacial wall. We took a Zodiac Boat tour that took us around the glacial lake and up close to some of the wildlife as well as the glacial wall.

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 These were the boats that we were in to cruise around the lagoon!

 We were wearing our protective suits to stay warm!

 I love finding patterns in nature, such as this fascinating piece of glacier.

This is a picture of the glacial wall. It is melting pretty fast and is estimated to be completely gone in less than 100 years. So sad! Jake and I have talked several times about how lucky we feel to take this trip, especially as we are seeing sites that are not going to be available to future generations for much longer!

 As the glaciers slowly drift through the lagoon, they eventually meet the ocean, so they sometimes stay on the black sand beaches for a while and melt, or they get pulled into sea. This was definitely not a site I had seen before.

After the glacier lagoon, we stopped at one more national park. This was another glacier national park, but not as impressive as the lagoon. However, what was impressive was this species of bird that was hanging around outside of the park. There were several of them, and also they don't look very big from this picture, they were about the size of a chicken. They look pretty mean. After a quick google search, I learned these birds are called the Great Scua.

The site I will end on for this post was back in Vik, the southernmost town of Iceland. This was actually pretty surreal for me because I had seen a photo of this exact same view of Vik from about a year or two ago from National Geographic (see the original Nat. Geo. image below), and I was immediately entranced by the photo. At that point, I did not know that Jake and I would be going to Iceland for our trip, and didn't really know any cities or towns in Iceland besides Reykjavik, so I basically assumed that I would never see it. It wasn't until after we had booked our trip and we were getting ready to head to Vik where I realized that I would actually get to see the scene from the photo and I was so excited! Jake and I parked our car by the church and hiked up to the top of the hill to look out over the town and the beaches to get one of the most incredible views of my entire life! We couldn't have had better weather either!

Hopefully you are having a beautiful day! Thanks for reading!